Game of Thrones: Don’t Worry, the Night King and Arya Are “Very Good Friends” IRL

The night might be dark and full of terrors, but it turns out the Night King is actually full of love for the Seven Kingdoms IRL. The icy leader of the White Walkers never utters a word on Game of Thrones, but luckily, stuntman Vladimir Furdik has plenty to say about his character. He recently opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about the Night King’s shocking death and his own relationship with Maisie Williams, following the Battle of Winterfell.

Fans have their own, ahem, intense feelings about Arya’s surprise attack on the king, but Furdik remembers filming the scene on “a very emotional day and night.” He and Williams played out the sequence “maybe 15 times” in the cold and rain while she jumped at him from a harness on a wire.

“When I have to hold her under the jaw and it looks like she dies, we had to spend a lot of energy on that particular scene. It was very, very difficult,” Furdik recalled. “We are very good friends. We know each other. It wasn’t easy for me to [pretend to] hurt her.” Their friendship is evident in a photo Furdik shared, which shows him and Williams post-fight scene. The caption reads, “She killed me with a smile.”

Despite all the stress and pressure of becoming the Night King, there are still things Furdik misses about the show. “I will miss the people who helped me to be the Night King,” he said. “This was the costume and makeup departments who helped me to be the man who was out in front of the camera. You might not know it, but it’s maybe 25 or 30 people who helped me be that man, with the prosthetics, the makeup, the camera department, the lightning. I miss these people.”

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An 11-year-old girl went on a bike ride on Thanksgiving Day in 1972. The next day her body was found dumped on a rocky beach near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. She'd been raped and strangled.